Ramblings from travels to the interior and exterior

On the Tenacity of Spirit

This is the 9th straight Friday I’ve had that didn’t herald a weekend ahead (week what?) and, ominous warnings from all the burnout literature aside, I’m doing pretty okay.

A large part of this comes from a personal predisposition (also culturally inherited and aided) to forget everything except the very short-term past. It’s only been eight weeks, but I can’t quite remember anymore what I did during the weekends (what did I do with all that free time???) and what it’s like to leave the workplace earlier than 8:00 pm. So there’s no grief, no resentment and no sense of loss—just a faint bewilderment that life used to be lived so differently.

(I’ve experienced this puzzlement many times in my life: as a high-schooler reminiscing about grade school life; as a college freshman reminiscing about high school life; as a fresh graduate reminiscing about university life; as an overseas Filipino worker reminiscing about life back home; and so on and so forth. So many selves acquired; and just as many selves discarded and forgotten.)

So my life right now occurs to me as normal, though just four weeks back I was railing precisely against its abnormalcy. And there’s an odd solace to be found in this acclimatization: that in spite of our worst fears and our own inner terrors, we get up, we survive, we make do, and we (surprisingly) even flourish.

It’s Friday after all, and even if I don’t get a weekend, I’m still inclined to celebrate.